Chapter Text
You knew Camie had done something terrible before you’d even opened the note.
It lay there on her pillow, addressed to her mother in her horrendously girlish hand, a riot of wild loops and curlicues.
Camie had gotten into enough trouble over the years that you recognized when she was trying to obscure her misdeeds under aggressively elaborate flourishes of ink. And with the volume of ink on this letterface—coupled with the fact that it was the letter in her bed, rather than the girl herself–it could only mean the message within was going to be her biggest misdeed of them all.
Your first instinct was to hide it–stuff the letter away up the chimney flue, where it would hopefully crisp and burn, never to be read by human eyes. Specifically by Mrs. Utsushimi, who was prone to even more exaggerated fits than Camie. If she never read it, she’d never be able to spiral into the dramatics you were certain would follow on its heels.
In your years of service to the Utsushimi family, you’d learned only too well how her theatrics usually ended with a mess of new things for you to mend–spilled tea to soak out of the table linens, runny eye powder to wash out of her handkerchiefs, dress collars in need of restitching after she tore them, clutching dramatically at her breast.
Camie was usually the root cause of the high dudgeon, though she was usually here to make amends to you afterwards. But now, you knew she’d never return permanently to this house. You knew the letter meant the end.
Things would be even worse, though, were Mrs. Utsushimi to be given no explanation for Camie’s disappearance, left to her own devices and flights of fancy. There would most certainly be talk of rogues and pirates and highwaymen, and you’d be sent to fetch the police.
So instead of squirreling the letter away, you carried it down to the morning room, your stomach churning.
Mrs. Utsushimi was predictably overwrought, her eyes growing wide as she snatched it from you.
“Kidnapped!” She sobbed as she opened it over the breakfast table, reaching her conclusion before the letter had even fully come unfolded. “Camie’s been kidnapped!”
You carefully suppressed the eyeroll you might have once given Camie over her mother’s head.
Camie was missing, but she had most certainly not been kidnapped.
As a maid, you didn’t have much background in the kidnapping business, but you rather thought that any criminal worth their salt might have targeted a family of more means than the Utsushimis—who were well to-do, but untitled, and living off a stipend that did not extend itself much beyond the daily upkeep of three women.
Any criminal progressing through the house would be able to tell that the majority of the Utsushimi’s belongings were concentrated in their sitting room, so as to appear well-off to any visitors, but the rest of the house was starkly barren of almost any decor. The Utsushimis’ jewels sparkled prettily by candlelight but a close inspection would reveal them to be paste, and the retention of only two household staff–yourself and a cook—would have made it clear to even the most inexperienced criminal that the Utsushimis had no funds with which to ransom a kidnapped daughter.
The note itself was also a giveaway. You doubted a kidnapper with any dignity would dare address the letter face with: Sweet Mumsy, please don’t be angry.
Finally, there was the fact that Camie had been in love with Lord Inasa Yoarashi since they were children to contend with. A note left in the dead of night announcing their elopement and subsequent honeymoon on the continent–to give Mrs. Utsushimi time to calm down, you suspected–was not entirely unexpected.
“She’s not been kidnapped, mama,” the eldest Miss Utsushimi said–Caroline, the only voice of reason in the Utsushimi household. “She’s with Lord Inasa, and you know he will take good care of her.”
“Take good care of her?” Mrs. Utsushimi echoed in disbelief. “What good can come of this? She’ll be ruined!”
Caroline shook her head. “The town will talk, but you know Camie, and you know Lord Inasa. They will be good for one another. And Lord Inasa has the means to ignore the ton–she’ll want for nothing.”
“Then what of us?” Mrs. Utsushimi cried. “What of your prospects? Already in your second season. A younger sister, wedded before you, and a history of scandal in the family? Caroline, you know very well this means no proper gentleman will have you now!”
Caroline paused, as Mrs. Utsushimi buried another sob in her handkerchief. Even you shifted awkwardly in the doorway, feeling slightly guilty.
A younger sister married off before the eldest would suggest something was wrong with Caroline, that she somehow might be damaged goods. And an elopement in the family would cast suspicions on Caroline’s own purity.
You didn’t like Caroline as much as you liked Camie, who had always been so free with her affections, even to the servants. You and Camie were of an age, and she’d taken to you immediately when you’d first come to the family as a specky teenager, desperately seeking a job to support your family. Camie had taught you to read, taught you card games, snuck you refreshments out of family dinners, and unabashedly gifted you many of her own ribbons and trinkets as she outgrew them, much to the dour disapproval of her mother.
Caroline had been somewhat more aloof, comparatively, clearly more aware of your status as a servant. But she had always been polite nevertheless, and she had definitively looked the other way whenever she caught you and Camie at your hijinks.
You did not think that Caroline, standoffish as she was, deserved the fate Camie had all but sealed for her. You counted Camie your closest friend, but even you could see this had been thoughtless of her.
You gathered yourself together, making an awkward noise like the clearing of your throat to get their attention.
“That’s only if they are seen,” you said, trying to sound reassuring, and also like it was at all your place to interject. “And as Camie’s not had her first season yet no one will recognize her.” You hoped you sounded confident in this.
Privately, you thought Camie was as unsubtle as six baboons riding a tiger dressed in petticoats playing the trombone–and the combination of Camie and Lord Yoarashi would be even worse. But no one knew Camie on sight, considering this season was meant to be her debut into society, and as long as she didn’t talk, the Utsushimi family might, just might, be saved from scandal.
“And what are people to think if she doesn’t debut this year?” Mrs. Utsuhshimi demanded, swiping a scone off the breakfast tray and buttering it angrily. “I’ve already announced the Monomas’ ball this week as her coming out. People will start talking if she’s not present.”
“She’s taken ill,” you supplied. “Perhaps she’s been sent to stay with a cousin while she recovers.”
“The ball is two nights from now, and I’ve still got an order in for her dresses, due to arrive this afternoon. I’ve made no mention of their being unnecessary until now.” Mrs. Utsushimi looked put out. “People will talk if the illness is so sudden. And what if they think Caroline a vector of the same disease?”
It went unsaid that Caroline could ill afford to be avoided. Especially not now that her efforts would need to be redoubled, to be married before news broke of Camie’s own nuptials.
You wracked your brain for a solution as the two women breakfasted. Illness was a no, pretending as though Camie hadn’t actually been meant to debut was a no…“Perhaps…if Camie did debut…..” you said, thinking aloud.
If they could feign an illness just long enough to recall her, and send her to subsequent events as though she were not already married…
Mrs. Utsuhimi’s sniffles seized in her nose. “If she—how would she debut now, girl?”
But it was probably far too late to recall Camie, and you could only guess where she’d be. Even if you could dispatch someone to collect her, you thought she would probably never agree to participate in the Season, far too put out and having been denied her adventure.
You’d have to think of something else.
“No, it’s silly–” you started to say, but Mrs. Utsushimi cut you off with a dramatic gasp.
“That’s it!” She cried. “No one knows Camie—and if we can get Caroline married off before the plot is revealed…”
You stared at her. What plot? Hadn’t you only now discussed how excuses might damage Caroline’s reputation? And what married off? Where were you supposed to find her a bridegroom at this hour?
But Mrs. Utsushimi quickly clarified the depths of her insanity. “It’ll have to be you. Anyone else might be talked into betraying her.”
You blinked. What would have to be you? That sounded almost like—
“We’ll have to alter her dresses–well, you will–and Caroline will have to imbue you with some etiquette, of course. I don’t suppose Camie left any of her jewels, did she? If not, you might borrow a few of my pastes–”
You dropped the silverware you’d been rearranging, the fork plopping into the butter with a flat little spat noise.
“You mean—impersonate Camie?” You blurted, mind suddenly reeling. “At—in public?”
“Well we certainly don’t need it here,” Mrs. Utsushimi said shortly, waving her handkerchief impatiently.
You took comfort in the expression on Caroline’s face, a horrified gape of her pert mouth that mirrored your own shock. “Mama,” she started, but her mother waved her off.
“Mrs. Utsushimi—ma’am—I couldn’t. That’s not—”
“Hush, hush,” Mrs. Utsushimi said, looking impatient. “It’s just until Caroline finds a husband. We’ll be uncovered, eventually, but Caroline will already be matched by then, and her virtues proven upon consummation.”
Caroline looked uncomfortable.
You too, could not think of a woman who might like to start her married life off on such a deception. Your heart twinged at her predicament.
But of course this entire scheme could not play out this way. You definitely could not pretend to be Camie. Not only because it was an idea so insane it beggared belief, not only because you were sure to be the least convincing gentlewoman of all time, but also because there was no benefit to you.
If the scheme was revealed, which it would be as soon as Camie returned from the continent and was decidedly a different person than the girl who’d flitted in and out of parties all season—you would be caught out. Propriety would obviously demand you be dismissed from the Utsushimi household, no matter how complicit the Utsushimis themselves were in the scandal, and you’d never work again in this town.
And besides taking care of yourself, you had parents in the countryside who needed looking after, and your wage, meager as it was, was essential to their upkeep.
“I can’t do it,” you said firmly, catching Mrs. Utsushimi’s eye. “I am sorry.”
Mrs. Utsushimi’s face pulled into annoyance, flapping her handkerchief dramatically at you. “Of course you can, I’ve just laid out the plan—”
“I mean that I have to look out for myself, ma’am. When I’m uncovered, you’d have to dismiss me, and I won’t have a job to go to next. I need the money for my family.”
Mrs. Utsushimi hummed, taking a thoughtful sip of her tea. Her eyes narrowed at you over the rim of the cup, and her voice emerged slightly muffled. “You mean you’d do it, otherwise? If your wages are taken care of?”
You blinked. “I—well, possibly—I’d need to consider…”
Mrs. Utsuhimi hummed again, twisting her handkerchief in her fingers. She was quiet for a long moment, staring at you with an intensity that had you squirming uncomfortably.
Finally, she made a pronouncement.
“While you are in between jobs, I will pay you a stipend of your regular wages,” she said. “I will also secure additional reimbursement from Camie’s new husband. Lord Inasa would think nothing of giving it.” This you knew to be true, from the little you’d interacted with him. More money than sense, that man. But generous, too, and fairly good-natured.
“And if you are unable to find work,” Mrs. Utsushimi continued, “I will ensure that Camie will secure you a place in her new household.”
Your heart warmed.
That sounded true enough. Already embroiled in scandal herself, and your friend besides, Camie would think nothing of giving you a place in her home. And given the judgmental nature of the ton, it was improbable she would be entertaining from her social set for quite some time, meaning you would likely never have the uncomfortable experience of waiting on someone you’d once duped.
It sounded foolproof—well, as foolproof as a plan that was foolish by its very nature could be.
It was utterly hare-brained…but if it meant money, and a place in Camie’s new home…
There was just the matter of you being convincing enough to pass as a member of Musutafu’s gentry.
You’d spent enough time with Camie to affect some of her genteel mannerisms, but there would be all manner of things you’d only heard tell of that you’d have to familiarize yourself with. How dance cards worked, the steps of dances themselves, affecting an educated conversation, which silverware pieces to use at the table—all of it sounded overwhelming.
With only a few days to prepare, you didn’t know if you could do it.
As if she sensed your hesitation, Caroline leaned forward at the other end of the table. She looked as though she still had doubts–you certainly did–-but you sensed a bit of resolve in her, as well. There was only so much a lady of her station could do–and she did need to marry well.
This was for her benefit.
“I’ll…help you,” she said, giving a tight, but genuine smile. “If we…if we really are doing this. We can start lessons after breakfast, and I will show you everything I know.”
You nodded, and Mrs. Utsushimi gave an artful wave of her handkerchief.
“Then it’s settled,” she pronounced, in tones that sounded terribly final. “For the next few months, you will be Camie.”
Your stomach turned over with a sudden bout of nerves. It meant risking everything about your current situation–and it would mean a new life in just a few months.
“A hundred pounds, I think, would be suitable?” Mrs. Utsushimi said, as though she could read your hesitation.
A hundred pounds. Enough to keep your parents comfortably for a few years, if you were smart about it. Enough that it was worth the potential risks.
And that settled it.
You would do it. You would be Camie. You would deceive the ton—all the lords, ladies, dukes and duchesses.
Or you would risk it all trying.